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NAS/SAN Search 2014

I’ve heard of XPEnology (Synology OS) a long time ago, it’s a modified version of the OS to run on non-Synology hardware. I’ve been meaning to try this one for a while now but had no hardware to test it on. Now it seems like a good time.

The web site for XPEnology consists of a forum message board with some Pinned how-to threads. Based on the post frequency it’s quite obvious that it’s not a very popular solution. Nonetheless, I was determined to give it a try.

The installation process is pretty odd and convoluted. The first step is to write a boot image to a USB device and have the machine boot into it. Then use the Synology Assistant Tool to discover the device and load the DSM OS onto it.

During my attempts at getting it installed, every time the installer rebooted the server, the Synology Assistant came back with “Configuration Lost” and the whole install process seemed to have aborted. I’ve searched the forums with no real answer leaving me with the assumption that my test hardware (HP DL320 G6) is not supported by the OS.

It’s a shame that I never got it to work as it looked like a nice, slick implementation. On to the next one.

Issues:
– Limited support for SAS controllers (LSI SAS2008 doesn’t seem to work at all)
– Need to modify image to change MAC/Serial for each install on the same network
– Convoluted installation process
– The DSM software installs onto storage disk which is at risk in case of disk failure
– Not a very popular solution
– x86 version limits RAM to 4GB, doesn’t leave much room for caching.